Public workers are easy marks for bullies

Schoolroom lessons ignored in right-wing power politics.

by Ish Theilheimer

Working for the public these days is like wearing a bullseye on your back. Every passing politician wants to use you for target practice. After years of hectoring and propoganda, the right wingers' message has become dominant. They blame government, public services and public sector workers for public deficits. The talk show jocks and bully pulpit politicos who hammer these points home every day never mention the real reasons for big deficits, like cutting corporate taxes and corporation exporting jobs to low-wage countries — all of which leaves government treasuries stripped bare of tax dollars. It's pretty hard for a government to stay in the black if it depends on income tax from Wal-Mart workers.

Instead of pointing to these things, the right-wing pundits force cuts on public sector workers and slash services people depend on.  And then they brag about all the laws they broke to do so.

Take this week's Ontario teacher contract controversy. The Liberal government there has done the same thing as Stephen Harper's feds have done here in Ottawa. Federally, the Conservatives gave tax breaks to big corporations and the wealthy and made the public pay the price by devastating key services and firing thousands of public sector workers.

 

In Ontario, Dalton McGuinty's Liberals nearly won a majority last year by promising no tax hikes. This year, they revealed the price of this promise: widespread public service cuts, privatization and across-the-board public sector wage freezes. These outcomes weren't mentioned in the Liberal  election platform, but hey, small oversight….

This week, Ontario Liberals fight two critical byelections that could give them a majority, if they win both. To help, McGuinty has created a crisis over teacher contracts, recalling the Legislature in time to score political points by branding teachers as greedy and telling all other public sector workers that his government is "coming for them" too with mandatory wage freezes.

It doesn't matter that wage freeze legislation like what's been proposed in Ontario breaks legal contracts. In fact, the BC government did the same thing in 2002 with its teachers and got slapped down hard by the Supreme Court of Canada and was forced to give back everything it took away from teachers.

What matters is that Dalton McGuinty desperately needs to win a byelection and his polling tells him the best way to do so is to attack teachers and public employees.

Hey, it's all the rage. Look at Brad Wall's anti-labour Saskatchewan Party government, which has been cited for labour rights violations by the United Nations. And Brad Wall doesn't hold a candle to what's happening in formerly progressive American states like Wisconsin.

Everyone knows governments have run up big deficits. Most people know why we have these deficits – tax breaks for big corporations and the outsourcing of good jobs.

So who should pay to get us out of the hole? Why should janitors, nurses, secretaries, orderlies, snow plow drivers, day care workers, maintenance people, teachers, cops and bus drivers pay the cost, just because they work for the public, while the ones with all the money get off cheap?

Somehow, the lessons we learned as kids don't seem to apply in politics, or when we cast our votes. As kids we learned to take our fair share and help others.  Now that we're grown up, the lesson is take what you can, however you can, as cheap as you can, from whomever you can, especially if they make an easy target, like public workers.

I guess I went to the wrong school.

 

© Copyright 2012 Ish Theilheimer, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca